I'd like to post a question to beta priest healers. After reading up on the forums an noting feedback from priest streamers I'm asking the question what spec would be best for healing straight off the start of the expansion? From what I know I realise the answer will most likely be holy, however I am only referring to 5mans and heroics, as I am unable to raid most of this expansion.

I know blue posts have stated 5heroics won't be as hard as the beginning of cata, but is disc really that low throughput that it will be that much of a problem? (at least until I learn the fights damage output). I am hoping that once I do a fight once or twice in shadow I'll be fine discing it after paying attention to the mechanics. Some quick feedback would b great. Ty

I found Holy to be a lot of fun in 5 mans, but I'm sure either spec will do fine.

I'd like to post a question to beta priest healers. After reading up on the forums an noting feedback from priest streamers I'm asking the question what spec would be best for healing straight off the start of the expansion? From what I know I realise the answer will most likely be holy, however I am only referring to 5mans and heroics, as I am unable to raid most of this expansion.

I know blue posts have stated 5heroics won't be as hard as the beginning of cata, but is disc really that low throughput that it will be that much of a problem? (at least until I learn the fights damage output). I am hoping that once I do a fight once or twice in shadow I'll be fine discing it after paying attention to the mechanics. Some quick feedback would b great. Ty

I think you misunderstood. Disc has a low throughput in raids, mostly due to poor aoe. Single target throughput is extremely strong. I haven't look at paladins, but I am reasonably sure it might be the strongest in the game. It certainly blows holy clean out of the water.

I tried both specs extensively. You can heal everything with both but Holy is the easier spec. It does better with mana and it's much easier to heal with it. Disc has an extreme amount of micromanagement, while with holy you can just rofl through the dungeon casting PoH, CoH and PoM blindly if you want to. However that being said for some dungeon challenge modes, if you have to double and tripple pull stuff disc might be better, because of the single target throughput and the nice CDs.

I cant really post a screenie directly atm, so here is a link
imageshack.us/photo/my-images/685/wowscrnshot082512235615.jpg/

This the first 30% on gajarat from last night, this is when the aoe damage started to get bad and I had to stop healing my guts out because mana was low. Bear in mind that this is recount, so it does not show spirit shell. I used twice by this point, for a total of somewhere between 1-1.3million. Each gheal is 120k+ and they all get absorbed because of voodoo doll. Basically I am sitting somewhere at 4m, 30% over the monk above me in the picture and 2-3times the other healers. Actual HPS is around 40k and that is just single target heals nothing else. I just did this to test out just how good disc single target healing is. I have done gajarat many times so far and I haven't seen any other class managing anything close to this.

All of those changes you point to are still there (they're from the very first MoP patch notes).
But they're not doing what you think they are doing.

On Live, base mana (basically the mana you get with no gear) is at 28k or something. All the spellcosts are based off that value. So if a spell on live costs 10% of that 28k, it will cost 2800 mana to cast. That value will be on your tooltip.

On the beta, there is no more "base mana". No stats (some exceptions for gnomes and metagems) can increase your manapool, so your manapool IS your base mana. As a result, all mana percentages are now based of your total mana (100k on lvl 85). So if your spell still cost 10% of your manabar, the spell would now cost 10k to cast. And of course, that's just ridiculous. So they lowered the percentages while they were at it. That 10% is lowered to 2.8%, but the actual manacost is the same - 2800 mana. If you just look at the tooltips, nothing has actually changed. But since it is the first patch in the beta, and the mechanics changed, they're all there.

The build you are referring to is thus just a counting technicality. Spells didn't get cheaper.

Honestly, I do not know how to really answer that question, but I will claim it is a very good question!

In Cata, int-scaling regen sources were dominating and making spirit-based regen absolutely pointless in comparison. In MoP, this trend continues; but with the difference that the int-based regen sources are now constant-based regen sources. That doesn't really change a lot - they're still fantastic for regen - they just don't grow more fantastic as you gear up. But as a consequence: If you lost all your spirit tomorrow, you would really only lose a fifth or a sixth of your total mana budget. Spirit continues to have a very low impact on your total mana budget, and I will claim that in MoP it is lower than ever. Stacking spirit absolutely feels like throwing perfectly good itemization out the window. You get so little return on investment!

On the other hand, and as you may have heard, mana is a premium asset now. No mana means no healing, which makes that healer look really bad and people dead. To be able to function, you need far more mana than the "2-3 pieces of spirit gear" that the blueposters were recommending back in March. Anything less than a full set will make you feel ineffective. Basically, if you were a holypriest in cata, just think back to T11/T12 and gear just like that. If you were a discpriest in cataclysm, you're in for some changes. The only way to get mana is to stack spirit now; int won't help your longevity. Using that manapotion, racial change to blood elf, double regen trinket, tailor cloak perk, metagem, weapon enchant and whatnot just isn't enough alone. To function, you need spirit.

So... yeah. Stack spirit. Spirit is more important than anything else, really. Stack it up to the point where you feel you're good. The location of that point is a personal and content-based limit which I cannot tell you where is. But once you hit it - don't stack it at all, as you're just wasting good itemization. To lower the wasted itemization on spirit, do make sure to take full advantage of all those other sources of mana at your disposal. The more mana you can squeeze out of non-spirit sources (or the more you can save by not spending it), the more itemization you can spend on throughput, which makes you a better healer.

Think of spirit as that last drop that takes you from 80% sustainable to 100% sustainable. Just like a spriest uses hit rating to go from 80% viable to 100% viable. Once you're at that treshold, skip the stat completely.

I personally like how Priests are in Beta (even Shadow), but that is coming from someone who has rarely if ever played the class before, which the general consensus seems to concede are the people who will find Priest post-5.0.4 to be enjoyable. With regards to the healing question, it seems to be the case for Priests that Spirit is indeed important, and has a surprisingly large impact when it comes to the mana situation (speaking as someone who's only done some PuGs at 86 with the vendor gear), and reforging everything to spirit certainly made life easier. Generally speaking it is good to be smart and frugal with healing in MoP, though fortunately Priests and most healers in general have a much easier life than Mistweaver monks who seem tailor made for having mana issues.

"It hath been found by experience that no matter how decent, intelligent or thoughtful the reasoning of a conservative may be, as an argument with a liberal is advanced, the probability of being accused of ‘bigotry’, ‘hatred’ or ‘intolerance’ approaches 1." - Cranmer's Law

Honestly, I do not know how to really answer that question, but I will claim it is a very good question!

In Cata, int-scaling regen sources were dominating and making spirit-based regen absolutely pointless in comparison. In MoP, this trend continues; but with the difference that the int-based regen sources are now constant-based regen sources. That doesn't really change a lot - they're still fantastic for regen - they just don't grow more fantastic as you gear up. But as a consequence: If you lost all your spirit tomorrow, you would really only lose a fifth or a sixth of your total mana budget. Spirit continues to have a very low impact on your total mana budget, and I will claim that in MoP it is lower than ever. Stacking spirit absolutely feels like throwing perfectly good itemization out the window. You get so little return on investment!

On the other hand, and as you may have heard, mana is a premium asset now. No mana means no healing, which makes that healer look really bad and people dead. To be able to function, you need far more mana than the "2-3 pieces of spirit gear" that the blueposters were recommending back in March. Anything less than a full set will make you feel ineffective. Basically, if you were a holypriest in cata, just think back to T11/T12 and gear just like that. If you were a discpriest in cataclysm, you're in for some changes. The only way to get mana is to stack spirit now; int won't help your longevity. Using that manapotion, racial change to blood elf, double regen trinket, tailor cloak perk, metagem, weapon enchant and whatnot just isn't enough alone. To function, you need spirit.

So... yeah. Stack spirit. Spirit is more important than anything else, really. Stack it up to the point where you feel you're good. The location of that point is a personal and content-based limit which I cannot tell you where is. But once you hit it - don't stack it at all, as you're just wasting good itemization. To lower the wasted itemization on spirit, do make sure to take full advantage of all those other sources of mana at your disposal. The more mana you can squeeze out of non-spirit sources (or the more you can save by not spending it), the more itemization you can spend on throughput, which makes you a better healer.

Think of spirit as that last drop that takes you from 80% sustainable to 100% sustainable. Just like a spriest uses hit rating to go from 80% viable to 100% viable. Once you're at that treshold, skip the stat completely.

TLDR: spirit > anything else, for some value of spirit.

I stacked spirit on my priest thru whole cata until late Dragon Soul since I found it impossible to not get oom in 10 man Heroics. Ive taken a lot of shit for this from other players. "INT > Spirit u faggot"
But I played using my guts and while I may have been 1 or 2k lower on HPS than other classes at least I didnt had to worry about the mana anymore

Since players are saying that shit is really tough now in MoP im just wondering exactly how tough it acctualy is, is it "omg i need to reforge and gem to spirit" tough or is it "launch of cata heroics" tough.

I stacked spirit on my priest thru whole cata until late Dragon Soul since I found it impossible to not get oom in 10 man Heroics. Ive taken a lot of shit for this from other players. "INT > Spirit u faggot"
But I played using my guts and while I may have been 1 or 2k lower on HPS than other classes at least I didnt had to worry about the mana anymore

Since players are saying that shit is really tough now in MoP im just wondering exactly how tough it acctualy is, is it "omg i need to reforge and gem to spirit" tough or is it "launch of cata heroics" tough.

5mans off the bat are no problem if you have good cata raid gear. Once you hit 87-88 you will start finding mana to be a problem and at 90 it will run out very fast. In ilvl440 blue gear you can do all heroics without any trouble.

You need 7k spirit to heal any hc dungeon comfortably. You need 8k-8.5k spirit to heal raids and 10k spirit for the mana limitation to stop being so harsh. At 13k spirit or so spirit will stop being so important. With the new gems and enchants its not a problem to get 7k spirit in dragon soul hc gear right off the bat.

I stacked spirit on my priest thru whole cata until late Dragon Soul since I found it impossible to not get oom in 10 man Heroics. Ive taken a lot of shit for this from other players. "INT > Spirit u faggot"
But I played using my guts and while I may have been 1 or 2k lower on HPS than other classes at least I didnt had to worry about the mana anymore

Since players are saying that shit is really tough now in MoP im just wondering exactly how tough it acctualy is, is it "omg i need to reforge and gem to spirit" tough or is it "launch of cata heroics" tough.

*soothe*

I know the pain. I do. I've been a spirit stacker since TBC (and I do miss the 25% spi -> spellpower conversion!).
But ever since the int regen scaling took over in cata, int just outperformed spirit on almost any front. Being decked in spirit wasn't too bad though; the lack of throughput was outweighed by a comfortable mana reserve. At least that was the theory in WoTLK. It didn't quite work out in cata!

If you're like me, you still want to stick to spirit on all your gear. Then you get all the spirit you really need. Int just happens as you gear up, and the only real choice remaining is then down to mastery vs haste vs crit. I still like haste

The only choice is really down to INT vs SPI gems. I'm gonna go with SPI gems at least until I get decked in HC raidgear, and I will probably aim for the gem bonuses. I don't know if that is actually going to be optimal or even work out, but that's what I'll run with for starters.

In before people berating me for being horribly wrong in gearing choices.
Also in before my future self coming back QQ'ing on these very forums in 6 weeks about being horribly oom in 10HC raids despite - or maybe due to - stacking spirit.

5mans off the bat are no problem if you have good cata raid gear. Once you hit 87-88 you will start finding mana to be a problem and at 90 it will run out very fast. In ilvl440 blue gear you can do all heroics without any trouble.

You need 7k spirit to heal any hc dungeon comfortably. You need 8k-8.5k spirit to heal raids and 10k spirit for the mana limitation to stop being so harsh. At 13k spirit or so spirit will stop being so important. With the new gems and enchants its not a problem to get 7k spirit in dragon soul hc gear right off the bat.

Originally Posted by Danner

*soothe*

I know the pain. I do. I've been a spirit stacker since TBC (and I do miss the 25% spi -> spellpower conversion!).
But ever since the int regen scaling took over in cata, int just outperformed spirit on almost any front. Being decked in spirit wasn't too bad though; the lack of throughput was outweighed by a comfortable mana reserve. At least that was the theory in WoTLK. It didn't quite work out in cata!

If you're like me, you still want to stick to spirit on all your gear. Then you get all the spirit you really need. Int just happens as you gear up, and the only real choice remaining is then down to mastery vs haste vs crit. I still like haste

The only choice is really down to INT vs SPI gems. I'm gonna go with SPI gems at least until I get decked in HC raidgear, and I will probably aim for the gem bonuses. I don't know if that is actually going to be optimal or even work out, but that's what I'll run with for starters.

In before people berating me for being horribly wrong in gearing choices.
Also in before my future self coming back QQ'ing on these very forums in 6 weeks about being horribly oom in 10HC raids despite - or maybe due to - stacking spirit.

Probably no as dots gets tracked as "Wrath of teragosa" and is just a duplicate of the damage.

I was under the impression that our mastery proccs would count as normal dots though, proccing all the things they can.
I just wasn't sure this had been tested though. Feels like something that could easily be overlooked.

I was under the impression that our mastery proccs would count as normal dots though, proccing all the things they can.
I just wasn't sure this had been tested though. Feels like something that could easily be overlooked.

Early builds of shadow's mastery were infact not triggering anything. This has since been rectified, so now they trigger pretty much everything.

Meters matter for healers. They don't matter as much as they do for DPS, and they matter in different ways, but they do matter

It doesn't matter much. ALL of the top healing numbers you see in logs is decent healers playing with bad people who stands in the fire and tanks who don't optimize their stats or ability use. Playing with great people (being equally great yourself) and beating those healers is impossible obviously.

Not seeing this posted anywhere else, but Divine Hymn and hymn of hope are not gaining extra ticks from haste in 5.0.4. I was lusted and it simply did 4 ticks over 4 secs. Lightwell/Lightspring and renew are still gaining extra ticks though.

If you can keep up IF and Smite away you will always Crit with the Flash heals you get from FDCL(don't fix this before you fix SS+Archangel > Bliz)

And Regen doesn't seem to be on par with Holy's regen... can this be addressed with inc Rapture to 175% spirit or lower some key spell cost?
Think at least PW:S cost can be lowered just a bit, so it can be used outside the 12s Rapture cd with less mana hurt(compensate for lowered manapool) as PW:S wasn't included in the last go at lowered mana cost.

And add to all this losing the Barrier glyph and Divine Hymn, i'm worried that we're being pushed into tank healer-only slot.
*looks over on Holy Paladin, getting another smart AoE heal*

And Regen doesn't seem to be on par with Holy's regen... can this be addressed with inc Rapture to 175% spirit or lower some key spell cost?
Think at least PW:S cost can be lowered just a bit, so it can be used outside the 12s Rapture cd with less mana hurt(compensate for lowered manapool) as PW:S wasn't included in the last go at lowered mana cost.

Disc regen is now 50% the same as Holy, they are both equal. The only difference is that disc have Rapture which gives you extra mana (or cheap PW:S, as you want to see it).

There's also a very notable difference in spellcosts. Disc (should) rely a lot on PWS, which is at a monstrous cost, even if you include the rapture cost reduction. So while the mana income budget may be identical, the mana expense budget looks rather different.

I really wonder why PWS wasn't included in the "reduce cost of heals across the board by 10%" change.